Change the Status of an Idea

Administrators can change the status of an idea to communicate to the idea's submitter that the idea is moving ahead in the process, or that it has changed in priority.

There are several ways to change the status of an idea:

One idea at a time

Through a batch update based upon the Schedule
State
of a linked story in CA Agile Central

When you change the status of an idea, all subscribers to the idea are notified by email.

Change the Status of an Idea

To update the status for a single idea:

Select the pencil icon at the top-left of the detail
page
for the idea next to its status.

Select a status from the drop-down menu.

You can also add reason for status change as no comment, comment or, admin comment.

Trigger a Batch Status Update

To trigger a batch status update for all ideas linked to CA Agile Central work items:

On the homepage, administrators can select Sync Linked
Work Items
and Idea Statuses to manually update statuses. If you do not see this link, the CA Agile Central Integration has not been set up on the Plugin
tab
of the setup menu.

When you trigger a batch update, statuses for all ideas with active links to CA Agile Central stories are updated based on the criteria that the site administrator set up for the integration to CA Agile Central.

Edit an Idea

Administrators can change information about ideas after they are posted. Idea editing must be enabled from the Setup tab.

To edit an idea:

Select your avatar at the top-left corner of the page.

Select an idea in the Ideas tab.

You will see information about your idea post:
Select the edit icon next to any
field
you would like to edit. You can add or change tags, or to edit idea information (other than comments).

Administrators can pin a comment to the top of of an idea list. The pinned comment will stay at the top and indicate that the pinned comment is from your company.
To pin a comment, an administrator can mark an idea as Admin Comment. To unpin, select the thumbtack icon.

Organize Ideas

As a product manager, you need to organize ideas in a way that provides value to your site and company. Organizing ideas can include tasks such as:

Change the Category of an Idea

To change the category to which an idea is already assigned:

On the editor, select the arrow on the drop-down box of the Select a Category (Required):* field, then select the category you wish to use.

Select Change Category. .

Change and Add Tags to an Idea

To change or add tags to which an idea is already assigned:

For the idea you want to change, select the Edit Idea link.

Add or edit tags in the Please list tags related to your submission field.
Multiple tags must be separated by a space.

Select Update Idea.

View Idea Counts

To see which ideas are getting the most views by users:

You must have idea view count enabled from the set up tab. From the Ideas tab, select the Ideas page.

Select the Idea View Count checkbox.

Select Save Changes.

Promote an Idea to a Work Item in CA Agile Central

When you decide to implement an idea, you can quickly promote the work item to a story within CA Agile Central Software. You can connect an idea to a new work item or to an existing work item. You can also connect multiple ideas to a work item.

Each association and dissociation between an idea and a work item creates a discussion entry on the work item and the URL of the idea. This is particularly useful if there is more than one idea associated with one work item.

Follow these steps:

Open the idea you wish to promote.

Select the CA Agile Central link.

Specify whether to create a new work item or link to to an existing work item.

Choose the
workspace
,
project
, and work item type and select Create New Item.

To view your new story in CA Agile Central, select the story link.

Once your idea is entered in CA Agile Central Software, there are two CA Agile Central Idea Manager-specific fields which can help the development team view key information about the idea:

Idea URL: An active link to the idea in CA Agile Central Idea Manager. Use this link to view comments and other information.

Note: More than one idea can be linked to a story, but only the first assigned idea URL field displays in this field. When multiple ideas are linked to a story, you can access the idea URLs in the discussion area.

Notes: Indicates which
user
created the story in CA Agile Central Software. This area also specifies the idea site from where the idea came.

Only the idea's name and description are populated in CA Agile Central. Other custom or required fields you may have set up in CA Agile Central Idea Manager do not display in a linked CA Agile Central work item.

Promote Multiple or Complex Stories to CA Agile Central

Often, an idea is too complex to be promoted to just one work item. You may encounter one of these scenarios:

There are several different but related ideas

An idea is too large and complex to be implemented in a single
user story

Create a parent story and assign the similar ideas or break down the complex idea to child stories.

Specify Idea Details

To set up default information for posting and managing ideas:

Select the Setup tab at the top of the page.

Select the Ideas tab.

The Ideas tab has five pages:

Ideas: Use the Ideas page to set up features related to ideas.

Specify what fields to check for duplicates, what actions to allow for community members, and whether to allow demote voting in addition to promote voting.

Select the My Favorites checkbox to enable users to assign ideas to their My Favorites list. You must also set up My Favorites as an idea list tab.

Voting: If you enable voting, you can choose to use simple or chip voting.
With chip voting, specify the number of chips allotted per user and the number of chips a user can give to a single idea. Chips can be returned to the user once an idea they have voted on have reached a specific status.

Note: Enabling chip voting will reset all existing votes to zero.

Categories: Use the Categories page to set up the categories from which you will choose when organizing ideas. The character limit for a category name is 50; however, CA Agile Central recommends you limit the name to 30 characters or it will be cut off in the
dashboard
's Category Distribution chart.

Statuses: Use the Statuses page to set up statuses that you will use to communicate the progress of ideas to community members.

Submission Form: Use the Submission Form page to customize the submission form used by community members to post ideas. To make changes to the form, select the Edit Form icon.

To add a question, select Add Question, then select the format for your question. Specify your details on the form that is presented and select Done to save your changes.

To edit a question, select the Edit link to the right of the question. Select Done to save your changes.

To remove a question, select the Remove Question link to the right of the question.

To change the order of questions, move them up or down on the page by dragging the blue bar to the left of the question. Select Save Order to save your changes.

Update or Hide an Idea

You may want to change an idea, or add tags. To use this feature, your must first enable idea editing.

To update or hide an idea:

Use the search or idea list filters to find the idea that you want to change.

Select Toggle idea visibility to remove the idea from searches, lists and filters. Use this to hide idea posts that may be inappropriate. Hidden ideas are not included in reports or on the dashboard, but are included in community statistics.

View a User's Ideas

To view all the ideas an individual user has entered:

From the Ideas tab, select the user name you wish to monitor. If you don't see the user in the list of ideas, use the Search field to find them.

The Ideas section contains a list with links to all the ideas an individual user has entered. The list also specifies the status and the number of comments for the idea.

Reports

You can download information about ideas, votes, login history, search history, categories, API, trend tracking, and follower information from CA Agile Central Idea Manager. Downloaded data from the last 30 days is saved in .xls files where you have set up for downloads on your computer.

Hidden ideas are not reported.

To download reports:

Select the Setup tab, then select the Exports tab.

The Exports tab contains these pages:

Ideas: Select the Ideas page to download information about ideas.

You can use the following filters for the ideas export:

Include user profile data

Include submission form data

Include idea comments

Select any of the checkboxes as needed to include user profile data, submission form data, and idea comments.
The Score column on the report reflects the number of votes an idea has received. For example, an idea with 10 positive votes has a score of 10, and an idea with 10 positive votes and one negative vote has a score of 9.

Select Idea Status Change History to view the status history of ideas.

Votes: Select the Votes page to download information on the number of votes per idea.

Users: Select the Users page to download information about users and their activity on the site. This includes the number of ideas and comments posted, last login date, and voting statistics. Specify whether to include user profile information.

Login History: Select the Login History page to download information about login activity on the site. Specify whether to include user profile information.

Categories: Select the Categories page to download information on the number of ideas assigned to each category.

Trend Tracking: Select the Trend Tracking page to download trend history during a given date range.

Share Idea Links

In order to encourage other users to comment on or promote your ideas, you can email them a link to the idea. Only administrators have access to the vanity URL necessary for sending links to ideas.

Note: You can advertise this URL by displaying it in one of the guidance panels.

Feedback

Need more help? The CA Agile Central Community is your one-stop shop for self-service and support. To submit feedback or cases to CA Agile Central Support, find answers, and collaborate with others, please join us in the CA Agile Central Community.